CHAPTER 18
THIS brEAKUP HAPPENED two hours ago. I left the house less than twenty-four hours ago. I just kind of need to remind myself of the timeline, because the house is telling me it has been eighty-four years.
How one woman has ordered this much takeaway in less than a day is unfathomable.
Most of it’s still lying around the apartment, though.
The lamb curry leaked out of the container and has possibly permanently stained the benchtop.
And there is a smell. A damp smell that lingers.
I don’t really want to find the source of that because I have a feeling it is going to give me a very large headache.
A living cliché, Bee is sitting on the couch in yesterday’s clothes and hair, eating ice cream and yelling at the television. I didn’t think people actually did that.
Never mind. It’s easier to focus on getting the house back in order.
It gives me somewhere to put my gaze; it keeps me in every room but the one Bee is in until it’s time to pick up the scattered tissue carcasses and mop up the abandoned ice cream from the floor.
Truthfully, I drag out the kitchen and bathroom clean-up as long as I can.
The cupboard under the sink may or may not have been rearranged.
I’ve splashed water all over Arthur’s jumper, which I’m still wearing.
Probably not the wisest, wearing it while cleaning, but I can’t bring myself to take it off.
Which is objectively stupid because I’m too mad at him to even respond to his texts.
I did thumbs-up his asking whether I got home okay; I’m not a monster. But that’s it.
I refuse to clean Bee’s bedroom.
So, you know. That’s progress. Something something growing a backbone. Something something self-worth.
We still don’t talk about it. I force her into the shower. (She’s the source of the damp smell? Possibly? Still don’t want to know.) We settle back onto the couch watching a reality show about people who scream at each other over various dinners. It’s strangely compelling.
What we do talk about is William. ‘He’s thirty-five!
Thirty-five!’ The man on the screen, who was just caught cheating on camera but is trying to gaslight the audience and the woman who walked in on him to trust what he’s saying and not what our eyes are telling us, is twenty-five. He and William would be good buds.
‘Way too old to be behaving this way,’ I agree.
‘I mean, lads on tour is cute when you’re twenty, but at his age it’s a little pathetic.’
‘It’s a lot pathetic.’
We have to turn it off when the cast trip is revealed to be Thailand.
Too close to home. Now we’re just staring at a black screen.
But it’s better than the alternative. I turn to face Bee head on.
‘Okay, you’re allowed to wallow for two more days, but you are going back to work on Wednesday at the ladies lunch thing. Deal?’
And I guess we’ll just work everything else out later.
By Monday afternoon, I’m already unsure that this deal will be honoured.
Apparently everything that reminds Bee of William must be gone.
I don’t actually think he ever left anything of his at the house, so I follow Bee and her empty box around, curious.
A throw pillow from her bed that he said he liked.
Her pink eye-shadow stick because he said it made her eyes look ‘ethereal’.
A perfectly good dress she has worn all of once because that was on their (our) first date.
It’s a weird mix. She hands me the box at the end of the purge, throws up her hands and walks away. I place the box in my room.
That dress could get me a hundred bucks online.
Arthur has messaged a few times.
How are things over there?
Bee found a blanket in the living room William once used when they watched a movie and now she’s crying into it. Things are not good.
Do you need anything?
A new apartment. The ability to say no. You.
I don’t reply.
On Tuesday afternoon we’re back on the couch, but it’s a bit less sad because we’re sitting and not lying on it, and we’re in activewear not pyjamas, and we’re not surrounded by discarded snot, when there’s a knock at the door. Bee and I look at each other.
‘I don’t want to see him,’ she says, shrinking into herself.
I get up and head towards the door. ‘I’ll get rid of him.’
As I open the door, I turn back toward the sound of her shouting, ‘I don’t want to see you!’
‘That’s okay. I don’t particularly want to see you either.’
And that’s not William. That’s Arthur, and he’s looking at me.
That stupid sad little puppy face that nearly made me crumble two days ago.
Then he looks down and clocks that I’m still in his jumper, which I have definitely, absolutely, certainly removed at some point in the last two days more than just when I needed to shower.
‘Oh,’ Bee yells, but softer.
‘You haven’t replied to my texts,’ Arthur says, drawing my attention back.
And I cross my arms, trying and certainly failing to look sassy and over it. I think it’s the jumper. ‘In these modern times, one can safely assume that if a response isn’t received, it is for a reason.’
‘Look, I’m sorry for criticising your decision to come back,’ he says, eyes pleading. ‘It was entirely your prerogative, and not mine to question.’
His apology annoys me more. Just double down on your poor decisions and make it easier for me to hate you, damn it. ‘I don’t need your approval for the choices I make.’
Metaphorically backed into a corner, he looks around for a physical way out. ‘No, of course not,’ he says, nodding. ‘I don’t want to suggest that either.’ He sighs. ‘I’m just sorry our day ended the way it did.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. Arms still crossed. I have to hold in what I really want to say. I’m sorry too. I wish I was still in your bed. Hold me.
I’m angry at him, I have to remind my traitorous heart. And he’s still on the threshold, which he has now noticed. ‘Can I come in?’ he asks, hopeful.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.’ Good riposte. Definitely not teenage-level.
He takes a step closer to me. I have to end this interaction very soon, or my resolve will crumble and I’ll be a puddle in his arms. ‘I was given the opportunity to observe behaviour I found unsavoury in a romantic partner, and I am currently taking the time to consider my options.’
Arthur looks horrified. And confused. Like he’s combing through every moment from the weekend to find where he went wrong.
I’ve dug myself a hole now, so I may as well just come out with all of it.
Quickest way to end it, really. ‘You knew what William did, and you texted him back like it was nothing.’
‘Was I meant to just cut him off immediately based on one emotionally charged phone call with your toxic BFF?’
‘Have you since called out his poor behaviour? Tried to hold him accountable?’
‘Yeah, fuck William!’ Bee shouts unhelpfully from the living room.
‘I haven’t even seen him!’
‘But you’ve talked.’
‘Well…’
‘About the situation?’
‘No,’ he admits. ‘About A-League.’
There it is. ‘So you’ve walked past his standard, which means you accept it.’
‘It does not!’ he yells. ‘How dare you lump me in with him? I have never…would never…do that.’
‘You’ll just be friends with someone who does,’ I say.
‘Well, you’ll be friends with someone who treats you like shit. In fact, you’ll come back begging for more the moment she crooks her bony finger!’
‘I heard that, you bastard!’ Bee calls from the other room.
‘I don’t give a shit, Bee!’ he calls back.
‘Oh,’ I say, crossing my arms. ‘And this is you not judging my choices?’
‘Well, it’s hard not to when they’re objectively bad!’
‘Then it’s time to look in a mirror, deadshit, because you’re right there with me!’
‘It’s not the same thing at all!’
‘It absolutely is! God, I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit!’
‘What bullshit?
‘Mr Sweet Sensitive Put-Together Guy. Just trying to help. Just liked me for me. You were putting the hard sell on me, and I fell for it! But you’re just as bad as him! And I’m just as blind as Bee!’
‘Hey!’ she yells again.
‘Shut up, Bee! No one’s fucking talking to you!’ I shout back, eyes still on Arthur.
‘Hang on. Hang on. We need to slow down a bit before we say something we might regret,’ he says.
I’m already overwhelmed by regret.
He tries to reach out and grab my upper arms, but I shrug him off and step back. He looks so sad. ‘Why are you letting their issues get in the way of us? Nothing about us has anything to do with them!’
I let out a derisive laugh. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ I say. ‘Everything with us has been about them. From the very start. There wouldn’t even be an us without them.’
We’re both breathing deeply now, looking at each other, but his eyes say more than I’m willing to acknowledge so I look down at my feet. Quietly, I whisper to them, ‘It makes sense that our ending would be about them too.’
He looks defeated. He is defeated, and he knows it. He lets me have the last word, though. Slowly, he turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back. When he gets into his car, he keeps his gaze forward, doesn’t once let it travel back up to me. It’s like he’s erasing me from his mind.
Long after he has driven away and left me behind, I shut the door and walk back into the living room. Bee is scrolling on her phone with the TV on mute. She looks up at me. ‘I ordered some more ice cream, and the driver is three minutes away. Can you meet him at the door?’
I walk into my room and shut the door.
I have hidden him on my social media. I don’t have it in me to block his number or unfollow him. But I hide him, and I delete our text stream so that I don’t have to look at his face or even his name. When I go to clear my camera roll, I find only his two goofy selfies.